Two Economic Policy Captains Working With Different Tools; Bush Makes Certain His Style Contrasts With That of Clinton

Published: January 5, 2001

(Page 2 of 2)

Moreover, just as Mr. Clinton made sure there were few supply-siders on hand at Little Rock, Mr. Bush's team appears not to have invited anyone who believes that tax cuts are a terrible idea, or that the country would be better off getting rid of the national debt as soon as possible.

''We talked briefly about the need for fiscal stimulus,'' said Michael S. Dell, the founder of Dell Computer, which is based here. ''There needs to be a multipronged approach,'' he said, ''the Fed's rate cut and then a tax cut.''

While Mr. Rove said that there was ''a spirited exchange'' on some questions of privacy in the Internet age, the participants said there were no real arguments. ''We found him very, very crisp on all the high-tech issues,'' John T. Chambers, the president of Cisco Systems, said of Mr. Bush. Mr. Chambers said that much of the lunchtime session was spent discussing education of future workers. ''A decade from now it will be jobs in the U.S. versus jobs in India or jobs in Jordan,'' Mr. Chambers said.

Several of the executives pressed Mr. Bush to support an expansion of the number of visas granted to high-technology professionals seeking to work in the United States, a labor force Silicon Valley has come to depend upon.

Perhaps the most notable feature of the sessions over the last two days was who was missing. The Treasury secretary-designate, Paul O'Neill, was in Washington visiting senators who will vote on his nomination. That was in sharp contrast to Little Rock, which was attended by both Mr. Clinton's Treasury-secretary designate, Lloyd Bentsen, and the man who would succeed him, Robert E. Rubin.

Also missing were any members of Mr. Bush's foreign policy team. Neither the secretary of state-designate, Colin Powell, or the future national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, were in town for the meeting.

And while trade was a major subject, Mr. Bush has yet to appoint a trade representative, and Bush aides have hinted that the job may be downgraded in status. Every president for the last 20 years has treated the trade representative as a cabinet-level post; Mr. Bush's aides say that is under review.

The second curiosity has been Mr. Bush's departure on Wednesday from the longtime White House practice of saying as little as possible about actions of the Federal Reserve. When Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman, announced a half-point cut in interest rates during the first session with business leaders here, Mr. Bush embraced the action, telling reporters ''I think the cut was needed.''

That seemed inoffensive -- after all it put Mr. Greenspan and Mr. Bush on the same side of the issue. But it also amounted to what one former Clinton administration official called ''a normative statement about Fed action,'' which creates the expectation that, whenever there are future actions by the Fed, the president will offer up his approval or disapproval.

Today Ari Fleisher, Mr. Bush's press secretary, said that was not necessarily the case. ''I think the president-elect will judge events and make his determinations as different events warrant,'' he said.